PONTIAC — The half-moon roof of the Pontiac Silverdome — an icon of the city for more than 30 years — has been deflated as the stadium’s owners begin renovations on the facility that once was the home of the Detroit Lions.

The 100-panel roof that was held up by air pressure over a structure of 18 three-strand steel cables measuring 750 feet long and weighing 20 pounds per foot. The cables were put up with helicopters.

The stadium, completed in 1975 at a cost of $55 million, was sold at auction in 2009 to Andreas Apostolopoulos, of Triple Investment Group LLC, who was born in Greece and now lives in Toronto, for $583,000. The Silverdome was home to the Detroit Lions until 2002.

“Part of our 2013 plan is to start renovating the building,” said Alex Loewy, events coordinator at the Silverdome.

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Loewy said the 23 air units that held the dome up were turned off one by one beginning about 7 p.m. Wednesday and the roof was completely deflated by Thursday.

The action was taken at this time instead of in the spring because “with the amount of snow that builds up we would have to be up there shoveling and keeping more units on,” adding to the cost of operating the building, Loewy said.

“Since the building’s been open, it’s relied on air pressure, so the fans run 24/7 and it’s been an (energy) drain,” said Loewy, who said no estimates on savings were available at this time.

The panels of the deflated roof are now resting on the cable structure, which at this time will keep the snow from coming into the stadium, he said.

Owners have not determined how long the panels will remain there or what will happen to them once the new hard roof is completed.

“We are still trying to decide what to do with them. Either we will try to find another use for them or we will sell them.

“We will hopefully begin renovations in the late spring or early summer,” said Loewy. He said the new hard roof will no longer be supported by air units.

“We deflated it not only to save on the energy costs, but in the future, we plan on becoming an energy producer — going green and putting solar panels on the roof,” he said.

“We just plan on updating it right now to make it more competitive and a viable option for all different types of events.”

No events will be held in the Silverdome until the renovations are completed, which may take up to a year. He could provide no further details of planned renovations.

One of the main reasons the Silverdome was sold for less than $600,000 by former Pontiac Emergency Finance Manager Fred Leeb was because it cost the financially struggling city about $1.8 million a year to keep the roof up.

Previous bids of more than $20 million by two groups of developers — led by Schostak Brothers and Etkins Equities — were not accepted by the City Council before Leeb was appointed by the state to run the city.

Super Bowl XL was the last hurrah for the 80,000-seat home of the Detroit Lions that is on a 132-acre site on Featherstone near M-59 and Interstate-75. The Silverdome was used for practice and events for the Super Bowl played at Ford Field in February 2006.

The Lions played Kansas City on Aug. 23, 1975, in the new $55.7 million stadium. Elvis Presley performed there a few months later on Dec. 3, 1975, to a sell-out crowd.

The Lions abandoned the Silverdome after their final regular-season game, Jan. 6, 2002, against Dallas, and now play at Ford Field in Detroit. Despite efforts to bring in new events, the loss of the Lions left the Silverdome without a sport to bring in the necessary revenue to avoid a deficit.

The football team paid a settlement of $26 million for breaking its contract. Of that, about half was used to pay off the remaining debt. The rest was used up in withdrawals to pay for city expenses and projects and to cover the annual $1.5 million to $1.7 million Silverdome deficit.

In 2005, when the Stadium Authority was discussing the closing of the Silverdome, there was a debate about whether to continue spending money to keep the dome roof up until the stadium was sold. Eventually, it was decided to do so to protect the city’s asset.

“If you leave the roof up, you can still protect the integrity of the building,” former operations manager John Kissick argued then.

“Once you let it down, it is accessible to rain and snow. Anything over 15 mph winds starts lifting up the panels if it is deflated and hanging. Then if you get into rain and snow, it would start accumulating and blowing out panels.”

Kissick explained then that deflating the roof would call for shutting down the units that provide air pressure to hold up the roof.

Once the units are shut down manually, it would take the panels about 20 to 30 minutes to gradually fall into the stadium and hang inverted about 50 feet toward the floor. If the city or the new owner decided the panels should be removed, it would cost about $330,000, Kissick estimated in 2005.

In 1985 and again in the late 1990s, the roof collapsed under the weight of snow.

Former Silverdome Executive Director Eric Walker described the second time the roof collapsed by saying: “It happened during the normal course of business.”

“The snow and sleet was hitting against the frame and it slapped, like someone slapped you; ripping a hole through the inflated cloth roof, allowing an avalanche of snow and ice to come crashing through.”

The snow remained mostly in the seating area, although anyone in the path of it could have been seriously injured, Walker said. Workers cleaned it up, but the roof was expensive to repair, Walker said; noting some seats also had to be replaced.